Her Name
by taylortot
Summary: It's a quiet day in the office, and though there are so many other things that demand his attention, it is the one thing that doesn't that he can't seem to force from his mind. One-shot.


He is not allowed to speak her given name so he has to call her by other things. He says them in his head because no one would believe these truths about her even if they spent an entire week by her side. So he keeps them to himself and allows his mind to wander to those words while he watches her work from the desk next to him.

The late-afternoon sunlight is golden as it streams through the window, igniting her yellow hair and immortalizing half of her face in such a simple beauty that it's hard for him to think about anything _but_ her name. She doesn't notice that her hair is on fire or that the curve of her cheek is lit just so to make his heart hammer a little faster in his chest. She doesn't notice that she has such confidence in her posture or the endearingly brave tilt of her chin as if there is nothing in the entire world she could possibly be terrified of. She doesn't notice that her mouth turns up lightly as her pen scratches across the paper on her desk thinking some mysterious thought or that the absolute awareness in her eyes is as unsettling as it is radiant, that every twitch and sigh is intoxicating and unbearable.

But he notices.

Oh, God, how he notices.

She feels him staring and looks up, the brilliancy of the sunlight dancing across her pale skin like a couple swinging wildly across a ballroom floor. Her shadow elongates over the desk like the dark figures that watch their every move, that makes it so dangerous for him to notice her in the exact ways that he does. A moment of utter stillness and then she's smiling her sad smile at him and he swears that there has never been anything more heartbreaking than watching his guardian angel suffer, her wings severed and bloodied and useless. The light illuminates the dimple in her left cheek, brightens the contour of her lips as if the entire point of this moment is for him to notice that (and of course he does, he notices everything about her) and act on it.

He knows what her luminous caramel eyes are saying, doesn't have to open his mouth and ask. The apologies, the promises, the acceptances. Everything they'd ever uttered before now held in the power of her eyes, reminding him that she is sorry, that she won't let him down, that these demons can drag her to the very pits of hell and it still won't be enough to tear her from his side. So vigilant, so faithful. He clutches the arms of his chair at the sudden despair that seizes him, just a infinitesimal change in posture, enough to catch her attention and her sad smile turns to a softened frown, eyes sparkling with the onset of evening light and mirroring the bitterness in his shadowed face.

He will never say it out loud, how afraid he is to lose her. The light at the end of this horrifyingly dark tunnel, is her; he fights for her. After watching everything else be torn from his very foundation, she is the rock he anchors himself to now. The strong fortress that protects him from the storms and the perils and the ghosts of their pasts and present. Intertwined like leaves on a vine since the end of his childhood, clutching at her, growing with her, holding onto the memory of what they were and what he wants them to be with such ferocity that the pressure stings his eyes and they become glassy like a frozen lake in the godforsaken cold of winter. To lose her would be detrimental; a loss not only of a physical manifestation of everything he cares for in this damned world, but more simplistically, a loss of himself. Who he was and who he will be. Could he move forward if the rock under his feet was degraded into pieces of sand, sinking, pulling him downward? Could he survive the separation if her vine was pulled and untangled from his, burned and thrashed and completely eradicated?

"Sir," she murmurs. There is nothing but that word from her mouth, but he understands. Her hand is only a foot from his, so close, and he wants to reach for it because fear is suddenly swelling up inside her like the tide of a hurricane and he wants to comfort her, wants to take her into the circle of his arms and tuck her in closely and never, ever release her into the darkness of loneliness again.

Instead, he turns his head from the illuminated beauty of her face because if he doesn't he is sure to break the rules and they are already in too much trouble to spare a moment of selfish indulgence. His hands are uncharacteristically clumsy as he shuffles the papers in front of him and reaches for the pen. She is scratching away next to him and the shadow dances in a slow and graceful way on the ugly green carpet before the desk that he is mesmerized by her again, the fluidity of her movements, without even looking at her. It's too easy for him to be distracted with his lack of sleep and the absence of his appetite and the one person he'd give the world for so temptingly close to him that he can hear her breaths and feel her pulse in his own blood.

He forces his eyes from her shadow, forces his eyes to the papers and forces his hand to start creating the looping words on the dotted lines. Mechanical movements that he doesn't have to think about. He wishes he did have to think; it would be easier than letting his mind wander, lingering on her, lingering on the demons that were chasing them, lingering on the possibilities of what these demons desired most and what they would do to achieve those goals. In his mind, he draws up a blank wall, letting a vast nothingness consume his head, giving him room to breathe.

But even in the absence of thought, one word comes to mind because this word is his, belongs to him, _is_ him.

It is her name.


End file.
